Storytelling Week One- Discussion Post One- Story Structure

Throughout my elementary/secondary education, I learned the traditional story structure of Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Denouement, and Resolution. With every book or play we read we were able to fit the stories to this pattern. In this week’s Topics section two other familiar story structures are drawn out, which similarly fit into the traditional story structure. This initial exploration of story structure appears to set up each story as following a similar pattern, and begs to ask the question if there is a different way for a story to pan out.

Watching the Kurt Vonnegut video on the topic of story shapes seemed to also suggest that stories always end on a happy note. Stories may begin at a different point of fortune for the protagonist (i.e. Cinderella at rock bottom on the ill fortune spectrum), yet in each of his examples the main character reaches happiness and good fortune at the end of the story. Having previously read Vonnegut’s work Slaughterhouse-Five in my senior thesis course and discussing it at great lengths, in know that even within Vonnegut’s own works that stories do not always follow this basic story shape. Not to spoil the ending of the novel for anyone who may not have read it, but the story does not have the traditional happy ending and instead concludes with death.

So does a story need to fall on this Good Fortune -> Ill Fortune/ Beginning -> End scale which Vonnegut has put forth? And to a greater extent does a story have to always start at the beginning and end at the end? Sure there are plenty of novels/stories which begin with one event and then backing up to explain how the character reached this point. But does this sort of story structure differ that greatly from the epitome of one? Are there other ways to tell a story? I know that there are a bunch of unanswered questions in this blog post, but this has always tended to be my way of writing (posing questions and not always answering them).

I personally find that Vonnegut’s first two examples on his story shape spectrum fit the majority of books I have read, and stories I have heard. There always seems to be a happy ending after moments of despair or trial and tribulation. Maybe this is the main way to tell a story, and other ways of structuring it are just that particular author/storyteller’s way of trying to be different.

What do you all think?